Just curious, how many of you here have actually attempted to build a pinball machine from the ground up? Furthermore, how many of you here actually run a company that's currently doing that? Lastly, are you really going to sit here and ignore the issues everyone from every manufacturer faces?
That's one side of this...
The other side is pretty clear as well, are these games even inspected before they get boxed up? How are these issues not caught during play testing? Did someone not hear the sounds a short wire loom being ripped out of the mounting would cause?
That's the other side of this...
Me personally, I wouldn't hesitate to buy another Spooky title and if I wasn't focusing on other things right now I'd already be on the list for Scooby Doo. None of what's been put forth to date changes my opinion on this either. That's not to say it doesn't suck for those who are getting games that need additional work, that's obviously not the customer experience anyone wants. There's no justification for some of the issues put forth either so I'm absolutely not defending Spooky on this one and the person who got the game with the multiple screw holes in it should get a completely brand new game with free shipping for both the replacement game and shipping the previous game back but that's an extreme example to me.
Building things is hard, a lot harder than most seem to think it is. Building things at scale is extremely hard and the more complex of a product you're building, like a pinball machine, the amount of things that have to go perfect are significant. While Spooky isn't out here soliciting advice I can't help it, they really and I mean REALLY, need to find and hire a quality manufacturing engineer. That won't fix 100% of everything, Stern is proof of that for sure, but it should improve things substantially.
Last thing I'll say on this is I am a little disappointed to see some of the same issues continuing to be a problem for Spooky. I have absolutely zero clue how the financials work in pinball so I don't know if Spooky can spend their way out of these like you can in other industries. What I do know is their spectacular customer service, and make no mistake Spooky has amazingly spectacular customer service, won't give them a "get out of jail free" card forever and it seems like that grace period is getting ever so closer to its end.